Rush hour

Rush has a 'deep intelligence, that exquisite sensitivity', says a
friend.Photo: John Donegan

Geoffrey Rush makes a rare appearance on the Melbourne stage this
month. On the eve of his Malthouse shows he spoke with Melinda
Houston about crosswords, Spicks 'n' Specks and Pauline
Hanson.

Geoffrey Rush arrives in a cab right on time and unfolds himself
unhurriedly from the back seat. A newspaper tucked under one arm,
he pauses to fire up a cigarette as PR women flutter around him,
before ambling across the Malthouse Theatre's forecourt.

Rush. It's a singularly inappropriate name. There is absolutely
nothing swift or sudden about Geoffrey Rush. Not his manner. Not
his speech. Not his attitude. Certainly not his success.

Once he's settled with a glass of wine and a sausage in a roll
(the theatre is holding a barbie in the forecourt), he expounds,
between bites, on his love of the barbecued sausage. His verbal
style favours the full stop over the comma. And no matter how
involved or tangential his conversation, he (a) never loses track
of his sentences and (b) always returns, in his own good time, to
the point.

"I've always been a bit of a plodder," he says. "I've taken time
to actually ascertain what I've been doing. And what I'm capable of
doing. I was probably 28 before I thought. This is my life. This is
my job." And, of course, although he had steady work from the time
he left university (something not too many Australian actors can
boast), "success" took its own sweet time coming.

He was 44 when he made Shine, 46 when he won the Oscar
for Best Actor, by which time he'd been working as an actor - in
theatre, film and television - for a quarter of a century. "None of
us was surprised," says friend and long-time collaborator, director
Neil Armfield. "In Shine it was like he'd created this new
form of acting. It all sort of seemed inevitable."

Plenty of actors (plenty of successful people generally) are
remarkably ready to complain about the price of fame. Not Rush. "No
qualification on that really. No downside," he says, grinning
faintly. ("It maybe increased the highs and lows a bit," admits
Armfield, "but he's still very much the same person.")

Before the Oscar, he was simply delighted to have made three
films in a row. "I'd made On Our Selection, Shine
and Children of the Revolution. Back to back. And I
thought, this is as good as it can possibly be. And compared to
theatre wages, I'm earning money I can actually put in the bank. To
maybe one day pay for my kids' education." Then he won that Oscar.
Then he was offered a role in Bille August's film version of
Les Miserables.

No qualms about the difficult second album for Rush, no worries
about how to top Shine. "I thought, there's nothing to
lose. I've got an Oscar. If I'm really bad in this, who cares? I'm
standing there in a really silly black hat. And a black frock.
Thinking. Nothing. Matters. It was really quite electric."

Rush, who stars in the Malthouse Theatre's production of the
absurdist comedy Exit the King (from March 24), inhabits a
curious position in the Australian star pantheon. He has not only
been remarkably successful and worked with a who's who of
international talent (everyone from the Coen brothers to Steven
Spielberg), it's also hard to think of a dud performance in the
past decade. The films may not all have been great, but Rush
consistently has been.

Les Mis didn't set the world on fire. ("It was artfully
released. And it was released against Deep Impact. And I
had this vision of people going to the Cineplex and thinking 'Hmm,
are we going to see the meteor film? Or are we going to Les
Miserables?'") But plenty of the films that Rush has subsequently
been involved with have been remarkable: from Shakespeare in
Love and Pirates of the Caribbean to Finding
Nemo and Harvey Krumpet.

Yet we haven't claimed him in the way we have Heath, Nicole,
Russ. We admire him, but warily. He's a brand that remains
resistant to popular adulation. "When that (the Oscar win) happened
- and I'm happy to have proved them wrong - the majority of the
press commentary, after the jingoist elation of a first-time Oscar
win for acting - was those sort of smarmy inevitable articles about
'He's this year's F. Murray Abraham'. What can he do? He certainly
won't be the next Tom Cruise."

Well, he certainly ain't Tom Cruise. And maybe that's part of
the public's resistance. He's older than your general run of
popular heroes (he'll be 56 in July). He's no pin-up. And maybe,
just maybe, the general population see him as a little aloof, even
a little (ahem) intellectual.

He is, for instance, addicted to the cryptic crossword in
Friday's Age by "DA" (David Astle) - so much so, he
insists that overseas friends who like crosswords access it online.
("He's the Sergeant Pepper of cryptic crosswords. A complete
mindfuck.") He favours 1960s girl bands over 1970s pub rock. ("I'd
love to go on Spicks 'n' Specks. Or RocKwiz.
Special subject: Phil Spector.")

Sure, he'll play a pirate. But then he'll go and do something
like this: take the lead role in Eugene Ionesco's Exit the
King. Not just take the lead but, with director Neil Armfield,
translate the script from the original French for the production
(Malthouse Theatre, from March 24).

And then say things like this about it: "There's a certain
theatricality to it. It feels like a companion project to things
like the Gogols we've done, The Alchemist, whatever. I
don't know how we're going to do it. All I know is I love that -
hidden inside this text, which is curiously poetic, deeply
philosophic about mortality, and has a sort of weird subversive
theatrical game going on - there's something odd in there."

Those are not comments that Heath, Nicole, Russ would make.

Although he does film superbly, Rush is not a film star. He's a
theatre guy. He loves playing to a live audience, the connections
that makes possible, not to mention the adrenaline rush of having
to get out there and just do the thing from beginning to end,
without coffee breaks or retakes.

He's particularly looking forward to this piece of theatre -
both for the play itself, and because it reunites him with some old
mates: director Neil Armfield, and actors Gillian Jones and Billie
Brown.

"I've known Geoffrey since 1969," says Brown. "I don't actually
remember when we first met. It was in that flurry that was Brisbane
in the late 1960s.

Curiously quite a bohemian world, not just in theatre but in the
arts generally. He was a bit older than I was but I thought he was
just simply wonderful. We were obviously of the same tribe. He was
very shy, very eccentric. And our friendship was based on that, on
two odd boys, the suburban boy, the boy from the bush, who liked
the theatre. We were outside of the normal range."

Now of course Rush is, as Brown says, "a very sophisticated
international star". But that eccentricity, and traces of that
shyness (in the slope of his shoulders, in the way he fixes on the
middle distance while talking to you) remain. "But he still has
that deep intelligence, that exquisite sensitivity," Brown
says.

"And I think we shared those real manly virtues, which are still
unfashionable, of being sensitive, of talking about things." Also,
of being kind of nerdy. "In our 20s both of us thought we'd never,
ever be attractive to women. So instead you had an armoury of jokes
as a means of seduction."

Rush is also, says Brown, a complex man, but baulks at
elaborating. "I've known Geoffrey for very nearly 40 years. When
you become as celebrated as Geoffrey..." He pauses. "One must trust
the investment of love."

While it's difficult to imagine Rush making out-and-out enemies
(he's simply not that abrasive) it's easy to imagine some people
not liking him very much. He doesn't seem like the kind of chap
who'd suffer fools gladly. That plodding quality could well
manifest itself as mulishness. "There's Geoffrey's way and no other
way," laughs Brown. "But he's crucially aware, self-aware, I would
think he's very conscious of all those things."

And, as a friend, Brown is interested in the fact that Rush has
chosen Exit the King as his latest project. "He's chosen
that role for some revelation it offers to himself," he says.
"There has been a very deep personal journey. His own relationship
with himself as a child. His understanding of that has deepened.
And you do get to an age when you start to make sense to
yourself."

The play is, among other things, a meditation on mortality,
something that anyone halfway through their life begins to
consider. "It is also a very short play, and inoffensive in its
brevity," Brown adds drily. "So it has that to recommend it."

And, like so many ideas from the 1960s (that war is bad, that
the environment needs protection), Exit the King seems to
have a particular resonance 40 years later. "It's about everything
not working any more. And if you've tried to get a minor complaint
through to Telstra, you'll know what I'm talking about," Rush
says.

"And Ionesco has written this explosive piece about the people
in charge failing to live up to their responsibilities. It's such a
potent theme. Every time you look at a newspaper the ethics of
representation and leadership, particularly in the democratic west,
is in tatters. Completely in tatters. And I think people are quite
disturbed by that. Suddenly we're thinking, 'What are these
so-called western ideals we live by?' Philosophically, the French
might have introduced it into European thought but it probably is
as recent as just after the Second World War that the idea of the
common wealth, the common good, actually came into public
life..."

Russ or Heath would never have said something like that either. But
philosophical musings are part of the skeleton of Rush's
conversation. He likes (or cannot help) thinking deeply about
things, about the things themselves and their context. Which is
perhaps another reason this nation has embraced him half-heartedly.
Deep thinking. It's not natural. Un-Australian, even. Which is
funny, because in so many ways Rush is quintessentially
Australian.

The word laconic might have been coined for Geoffrey Rush. He has
that very Australian willingness to take the piss. No subject seems
exempt, including (especially, even) himself. And despite a turn of
mind and turn of phrase that might alarm readers of tabloid
newspapers, he is deeply unpretentious, and eminently
approachable.

Despite having scaled the dizzy heights of Hollywood, he has
old-fashioned country manners. Rush was born in Toowoomba, an
hour-and-a-half west of Brisbane, but when his parents separated,
he moved to suburban Brisbane with his mother, who got a job at
Coles. You don't get more Aussie than that.

He wasn't especially bookish ("I read Noddy books. And then when
I think I was about 11 or 12 I read Huck Finn and thought, this is
the works"). He did play a bit of backyard cricket - and it's
surprisingly easy to imagine, a tall skinny kid in droopy shorts, a
mop of black curls, those long thin fingers.

In another life he would have made a first-rate fast bowler.
("Geoffrey does have the hallmarks of a real athlete," Brown says.
"He's physically very adept, he's intelligent, he's determined.
He's competitive. His body does magnificent things for him.") "But
my knowledge of cricket is you just hope you don't get caught out,"
Rush says. "Or break a window. So when I see cricket on TV I come
to it as such a dumb-arse."

His mother was, he says, a major influence. "I remember her being a
fantastic jiver. She could jive. She was probably 29 and she and
her dance partner friends would roll the rug up and put on Little
Richard 78s and cook up a storm. And I felt mentored by that."

And there were other grown-ups, assorted family members, who
were important in small ways. "You know, that uncle that comes into
your life that you remember telling you your first ribald jokes.
'Did you hear about Helena Rubenstein? Max Factor.' I remember
hearing that joke when I was about nine. Not quite getting it but
knowing there was something about it. There was a dirty
undercurrent to it. Something was smoking and sparking there."

He also has a sister, two years older, with whom he had "a
rivalrous upbringing", something as a parent he realises is pretty
much par for the course. "She had kids in her early 20s. Who are
now three tall strapping lads in their 30s. Once I had kids we
started to really seriously talk in a way that was wonderful. She
had all the advice, she knew by very direct experience. How to
raise children."

Rush's children, Angelica and James, are now 15 and 12. He's as
involved in their lives as his schedule allows and can regularly be
seen at speech nights or sports days or rummaging through the
trash-and-treasure stalls at his kids' school fetes. Like most
parents (and notwithstanding his sister's advice) he has a slight
feeling of flying blind. "But tough love and play seems to be the
bottom line, I think. Give them parameters. And have charades
nights. Let them run down the hallway with scissors from time to
time."

Says Neil Armfield: "Seeing Geoffrey with his children is a
revelation. It's a particularly strong bond. I think the separation
of his own parents was very traumatic, so there's a very strong,
very playful relationship with Jane and the kids."

Rush is also more Australian than most of his peers in that he
actually lives here. Five months out of 12 he's usually travelling,
but he has no other home base than Melbourne. And not in some
exclusive compound. Just a house (albeit a rather nice one) in an
ordinary suburban street (ditto). He settled here in 1988 when he
married actor Jane Menelaus. At the time he was commuting between
Adelaide, Sydney and Melbourne, wherever the work was. Melbourne
seemed as good a place as any to set up house. His wife, he says,
is and always has been "deeply Melbourne".

And he's come around to her way of thinking. "I do appreciate it
enormously and I think I see its greatest attributes because I am
away from it. When you come back you suddenly treasure how green it
is. I'm blown away every time I return to the city. How leafy it
is." (Rush has vigorously defended that leafiness in his
well-publicised campaigns against the redevelopment of the
Camberwell railway station and the construction of a 15-storey
tower at Camberwell Junction.)

It's well-documented just how visible Rush is, considering his star
status. He's often seen out walking his dogs, drinking at a city
bar or on public transport. During down times, you might see him
catching a movie at the Nova or ambling through a gallery.

But these days down time is so rare, that most of it is spent
reacquainting himself with his family. "When I'm home, I'm home. I
tend to focus in on home life," he says. "This year, as an example,
we went off and did The Golden Age in the UK, 11 or 12 weeks. Then
we did Pirates. So this year was pretty hefty in terms of time
away."

He does venture out from time to time. "Kind of catching up with
what's happening with mates in the theatre scene. Or doing dinners
with people. Ten or 12 people around a table. And thankfully
through connections like James Hewison (outgoing director of the
Melbourne International Film Festival) you start to get to know all
those fascinating little bars and clubs that have opened up in back
alleys. Which we shouldn't underestimate, because it's actually
pretty lively."

Rush is certainly very Australian in his love of a drink. And
that's not a euphemism for "Geoffrey has a drinking problem". He
just loves a drink. He also loves the vernacular of Australian
drinking and relishes phrases such as "I think I'll switch to red"
and "Let's have a cleansing ale".

It's another reason he loves this country (as opposed to, say,
LA). "In LA, if you have one drink with lunch, you're unusual. If
you have two, you have a problem. This ..." - and his long arm
embraces the barbecue party crowd in the Malthouse forecourt, which
popped the first cork at 1pm and is still merrily imbibing at 5pm -
"This is unimaginable decadence," says Rush. Plus, no one other
than an Australian knows how to properly barbecue a sausage.

It is deeply curious that someone so Australian - laid-back,
low-key, self-deprecating, unpretentious - should not be seen as
particularly Australian, while someone such as Steve Irwin (just
for example) with his environmental conscience and hysterical
enthusiasms and American wife should be lauded as quintessentially
Australian.

"There are certain Australian values that get plugged. And they
tend to be sentimental, old-fashioned, slightly sepia-toned. Which
actually don't correspond to what you see out there," Rush
says.

Not surprisingly, he has a unique way of summing up the great
Australian spirit. "I think Australian values are perfectly
encapsulated by the fact that Pauline Hanson can go from creating
One Nation to being a celebrity guest on Dancing with the
Stars and then reinvent a parliamentary career. They're
Australian values.

And they're the sort of things that define the dynamic of the
country. Nowhere else in the world is this going to happen."
And he sees the same dynamic at play in Australia's film industry:
the glorification of the ordinary (especially the appallingly
ordinary); the deep distrust of, even hostility towards, the
extraordinary. "The fact that Shane and Clayton Jacobson can
actually make a very stylish and artful film about dunny men. Kenny
is a work of genius. You thought it was going to be below-par
cheesy shit. It's actually a work of art. Then there's Murali's
2:37."

Last year's Melbourne International Film Festival opened in July
with a debut feature by 22-year-old writer and director Murali K.
Thalluri about teenage suicide. Within days, the Office of Film and
Literature Classification had slapped an R18-plus rating on the
film, blocking Thalluri's target audience from seeing it.

Little more than a fortnight later, a storm blew up around
allegations that Thalluri had fabricated his account of what
inspired the film - a friend's suicide and his own attempted
suicide. Rush was astonished by the uproar. "I couldn't believe
what I was reading. Whatever one thinks of 2:37 it was a film
actually seriously attempting to grapple with the theme of a Greek
tragedy."

Rush believes knocking people down to size as was done to
Thalluri is "a great Australian value. Mowing people down just when
they've done something that's actually quite adventurous. It's head
above the parapet - boom - brains blown out."

Also very Australian is the fact that Thalluri made his film
with unknown actors, on a ridiculous timetable, on the smell of an
oily rag, door-knocking to raise the funds. "There is that spirit
of endeavour and reinvention and pioneering. Which is how the Baz
Luhrmanns or whatever got started. That's a great Australian value.
The idea of what's still possible."

Daring to stick one's head above the parapet - and getting your
brains blown out - is something Rush has had a taste of. He doesn't
dwell on it, especially, but it's an undercurrent in any
conversation about his career and it clearly grieves him (in a
general, not a personal way) that the Tall Poppy Syndrome is alive
and well.

"But I think Murali is going to turn into quite an interesting
filmmaker because of this experience. When you're absolutely
pilloried, with such vehemence. It will certainly toughen him up."
Ah yes. The belief in tough love. In hardship as
character-building. Now that's a great Australian value. As is
sticking it up the tastemakers and the commentariat. Rush knows all
about that.

"I hope Murali now goes and makes a fabulous film in America,"
he concludes, with a slightly saturnine grin. "Then everyone will
go, 'Yes, we always knew he had it in him'." (m)

RUSH TO THE RESCUE

In 2003, Geoffrey Rush joined other Camberwell residents to
fight redevelopment of their local train station. Rush, who is
broadly critical of the Bracks Government's Melbourne 2030 planning
scheme, has called the various multi-storey proposals for
Camberwell "Godzilla's footprint", "a really bad concrete bunker"
and "not very Camberwell". He also enlisted the support of fellow
Camberwellian Barry Humphries.

"Be visionary and involved," he told a council working party on the
development in 2005. The changes are now on the backburner.

Rush weighed in again on planning last year, when he was at the
forefront of protests against a 15-storey tower planned for
Camberwell Junction. "It drops Melbourne design and urban planning
aspirations into the moron basket," he said. The local council
rejected the plans.

Before last year's state election, while filming in the United
States, he sent a statement to a rally on planning in Camberwell,
urging voters to take heart from the Democrats' victory in Congress
and warning of the dangers to "those in power who refuse to listen,
refuse to consult".

Rush is well-known as a train traveller, and he has been
involved in a campaign for the State Government to ditch private
operators of trains and trams when their contracts expire in 2008.
He signed an open letter to state party leaders and Transport
Minister Peter Bachelor before last November's state election,
calling privatisation of trains and trams "an expensive failure".
-- Felicity Lewis

FIVE OF THE BESTShine (1996) Although Rush was already well-known
in theatrical circles for his work on stage, it was Scott Hicks'
biopic about renowned pianist David Helfgott that launched him to
global film fame and earned him a Best Actor Oscar.

Shakespeare in Love (1998) Rush brought a
wonderful comic edge to his performance as theatrical entrepreneur
Philip Henslowe, for which he was nominated by the Academy as Best
Supporting Actor.

Quills (2000) Philip Kaufman's adaptation of
Doug Wright's play featured Rush as the Marquis De Sade, adding to
his gallery of exuberant dream weavers and earning him Wright's
admiration and a third Oscar nomination.

Pirates of the Caribbean (2003-2007) As Captain
Barbossa, Rush pitches the antics of a melodramatic villain in the
face of Johnny Depp's tongue-in-cheek, gold-toothed salty dog and
matches him quip for quip. -- Tom Ryan

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